RED ROCK

A CHRONICLE OF RECONSTRUCTION

SHE GAVE HIM A ROLLING-PIN AND HE SET TO WORK.

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RED ROCK

A CHRONICLE OF RECONSTRUCTION

BY

THOMAS NELSON PAGE

ILLUSTRATED BY B. WEST CLINEDINST

NEW YORKCHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS1899

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Copyright, 1898, byCHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

TROW DIRECTORYPRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANYNEW YORK

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To

F. L. P.

AN OLD-FASHIONED LADY

PREFACE

The Region where the Grays and Carys lived liestoo far from the centres of modern progress to belaid down on any map that will be accessible. And,as “he who maps an undiscovered country may placewhat boundaries he will,” it need only be said, thatit lies in the South, somewhere in that vague regionpartly in one of the old Southern States and partlyin the yet vaguer land of Memory. It will be spokenof in this story, as Dr. Cary, General Legaie, andthe other people who used to live there in old times,spoke of it, in warm affection, as, “the old County,”or, “the Red Rock section,” or just, “My country, sir.”

It was a goodly land in those old times—a rollingcountry, lying at the foot of the blue mountain-spurs,with forests and fields; rich meadows filled with fatcattle; watered by streams, sparkling and bubblingover rocks, or winding under willows and sycamores,to where the hills melted away in the low, alluviallands, where the sea once washed and still left itsmemory and its name.

The people of that section were the product of asystem of which it is the fashion nowadays to have[viii]only words of condemnation. Every ass that passesby kicks at the dead lion. It was an Oligarchy, theysay, which ruled and lorded it over all but thosefavored ones who belonged to it. But has one everknown the members of a Democracy to rule so justly?If they shone in prosperity, much more they shone inadversity; if they bore themselves haughtily in theirday of triumph, they have borne defeat with splendidfortitude. Their old family seats, with everythingelse in the world, were lost to them—their dignitybecame grandeur. Their entire system crumbled andfell about them in ruins—they remained unmoved.They were subjected to the greatest humiliation ofmodern times: their slaves were put over them—theyreconquered their section and preserved the civilizationof the Anglo-Saxon.

No doubt the phrase “Before the war” is at timessomewhat abused. It is just possible that there is acertain Caleb Osbaldistonism in the speech at times.But for those who knew the old County as it wasthen, and can contrast it with